Caribbean Studies Seminar Series

CLACS Caribbean Studies Seminar Series actively promotes intellectual engagement and knowledge exchange by providing scholars - including postgraduate students and early career researchers - with the opportunity to present their interdisciplinary, comparative and integrated research on the Caribbean.

Kout Kouto: Genocide in the Caribbean and the Stories of Betrayal

Speaker: Sophie Maríñez (CUNY) 

This talk draws from a chapter in Spirals in the Caribbean that brings together constitutional legislations, the history of genocides, and their subsequent re-narrations, confirming once again how genocides do not take place in a vacuum but often stem from legal apparatuses, such as constitutions, court rulings, and decrees. I take my cue from Ruling 168-13 issued in 2013 by the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic, which denationalized hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent effective retroactively to 1929. I delve into that pivotal year in world history to examine why Dominican congressmen reformed the Constitution not once but twice in only six months. As they did so, they introduced territorial claims in Haiti and an exception to the jus soli clause on nationality that established the nation as openly anti-Haitian. These 1929 constitutional reforms, I contend, laid the groundwork for the genocide committed against Haitians and Black Dominicans in 1937. The fact that the judges of the Constitutional Court cited the second reform as the legal basis for their ruling in 2013 reveals their disturbing perspective on what constitutes a bona fide Dominican national identity to them. 

Meanwhile, a trope of sisterhood keeps recurring as writers and historians describe a reality of historical alliances, cultural mixedness, and friendship between the two populations, who share a bond forged through the joys and tribulations of everyday life. That is why Haitian survivors of the 1937 genocide used Kout Kouto (“knife-stabbing” or “back-stabbing”) to describe what they experienced: a devastating betrayal by those they thought were their friends, brothers and sisters, and, in the case of Black Dominican victims, their own people.

Sophie Maríñez is a Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, where she recently won a Distinguished Teaching Award. She is also an affiliated professor for the Ph.D. Program in French at The Graduate Center, and regularly teaches as a visiting faculty member for the M.A. in the Study of the Americas at City College’s Division of Interdisciplinary Studies.

Her research lies at the intersection of history, literature, music, and other cultural productions from the francophone and Spanish-speaking Caribbean and their respective diasporas. It underscores Afro-diasporic decolonizing thought and aesthetics, collective memories, and literary and musical work that transcend dominant notions of race, ethnicity, gender, and national identity. Her new book, Spirals in the Caribbean: Representing Violence and Connection in Haiti and the Dominican Republic (Penn Press, 2024), has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

This seminar is part of the School of Advanced Study’s programme of events for Black History Month.

All are welcome to attend this free seminar, which will be held online via Zoom at 16:00 BST (UK time). You will need to register in advance to receive the online joining link. Please click on the Book Now button at the top of the page to register. 

For purchasing the book, please click here: https://www.pennpress.org/9781512826401/spirals-in-the-caribbean/ - 30% discount will be provided to attendees.